BUILDING BRANDS WITH A CONSCIENCE

Brands depend on creating organic relationships with their customers. A brand is nothing but a bouquet of beliefs which create a persona in the minds of its customer. A brand is not really ‘a thing’, but an essence and reflection of the customer’s living self.

Customers use brands to showcase their own personality to the world

Customers sport a Rolex because they want the world to believe that they value time. They buy a Ferrari because they want the world to believe that they are sporty. They wear an LV because they want the world to believe that they admire style etc. Narcissism is a term used to describe a person’s ‘love for his own idealised self’. Sporting brands gives away the customer’s constructed-idealised self. By endorsing the brand’s philosophy, they add to their own personas and self-image.

An intrinsic part of brand management is the creation of meanings around a brand. A brand manager is like a movie director. The customer’s mind is the screen where he projects all the images which the customer thinks are his own. Sometimes, the customer rejects the movie. Sometimes he accepts it.

All the media in the world is used in the projection process – paid media, owned media, earned media, influencers... they all work like members of an orchestra, where the brand manager is the conductor. Every single instrument needs to produce the right note at the right moment. Creating belief is not an easy task. One wrong move and a cacophony ensue.

How will conscience help brands navigate the era of media explosion?

The Internet consists of over 200 billion connected devices today. There are over 7 billion online persons (accounting for billions of duplications!). Together the world’s search engines handle over 5 billion searches a day. Over 4 million YouTube videos are watched every minute. The mainstay of brand communication – the conventional media is giving way to interactive shared content channels and affiliations.

To brands, this is a challenge as well as an opportunity. The challenges include the spiralling cost of marketing, increasing technological challenges, lack of control over assets, etc. The opportunities include the ability to influence large swathes of the audience at a time and generate personalised relationships and affiliations for their brands. It is easier to observe customers with cookies and predict the buying behaviour of influential groups.

Brand management is today a hands-on job. It involves a lot of technology. Advanced cookies keep track of prospective audiences. Mass customer data insights can be purchased from behaviour data aggregators who use artificial intelligence to weed out the noise. Social media profiles can tell you what the projected personality of your audience is (real drives can be different, but they are relevant for goods sold and consumed privately only).

The brand manager increasingly must use the consumer to co-build his brand narrative. Advertisements are not about statements made with pretty pictures and smart lines anymore. Consumers convey their expectations and experiences immediately. Each of the 200 billion connected devices on the Internet is a transmission device too. In the ensuing chaos and confusion, the brand manager has to rediscover the truth and ensure the integrity of his story. Today, you cannot build your portfolio on a bouquet of lies.

That brings conscience to the core. It gives you two advantages – one, your brand story is not at any risk, because it is built on truth and transparency and secondly, it helps the customers project an honest, image about themselves. Customers are shifting to ethical consumption too. They put people, planet, purpose and purchase together in their evaluation mix.

Ethical consumption is the new rule in social media-led markets. Ethical conduct on behalf of brands is also greatly appreciated. It costs far more to repair damages to a brand's reputation in the emerging global scenario. Brand managers should therefore ensure that no damage to the brand results from the proposed brand story. They need to answer five questions before any new campaign is launched.

1. Are we telling the truth here?
2. Can we get our existing customers to vouch for these products and its purpose?
3. How is this product adding to the entire brand narrative? Is it in sync?
4. Are all the messages synchronous across all media? Are there enough control and coordination measures?
5. Is there a call to action? What is the customer’s path to progress? Is it traceable?

Why Should Brands Take the Ethics Paradigm Seriously?

As the number of media channels explodes, and as consumers become transmitters of information themselves, brand managers are having to hand over the reins if brands to the consumers themselves. Consumer-driven conversations on sustainability and purpose are taking centerstage. Brands are being scrutinised continuously for their sustainability and ethical aspects on a 24x7 basis.

Over the next decade, conscience will become a new parameter of brand evaluation. Conscientious branding will evolve into a vital organ of the ESG paradigm.

www.medinge.org

We are a think tank of brand experts and visionaries from around the world whose purpose is to influence businesses to become more humane and conscious in order to help humanity progress and prosper.

It is our belief that organisations have a broad responsibility to all their stakeholders. Yet many organisations still treat their customers and other audiences as objects and try to control their brands.?Our argument is that a brand is created together with others for the benefit of the organisation, its stakeholders and society.

We would love to hear your views.